HomeGamesThe journey from The Sports Channel to Sky Sports, United Kingdom and Irelands premier sports channel.

The journey from The Sports Channel to Sky Sports, United Kingdom and Irelands premier sports channel.

Sky Sports is British Sky Broadcastings premier 24 hour sports news channel in England and Ireland. British Sky Broadcasting is actually a satellite pay TV company and along with Sky Sports it also has Sky Sports 1, 2, 3 and Xtra which are available as a Premium package over the basic Sky Sports. Since its creation in 1990, Sky Sports has played an extremely dominant role in commercializing British sport. This channel has also been a key player in making a paradigm change in the organizational structure of sports broadcasting by being the first ones to support and encourage the Premier League to break away from the Football League in 1992 gambeling.

Sky Sports began as The Sports Channel in March 1990 as Sky Television was lacking a privileged sports channel initially. Sports programs were transmitted sometimes from this channel but instead of introducing a sports channel of their own, Sky Television chose to put money into Eurosport. With the launch of Sky Television in February 1989, Eurosport was marketed as one of its 4 channels.

British Sky Broadcasting and Sky Television announced a merger in 1990. Initially unveiled as British Sky Broadcasting, the Sports Channel was relabeled Sky Sports when it was finally launched in April, 1991 on the SES Astra IB Satellite tv. Eurosport terminated its partnership with Sky Television upon the launch of Sky Sports but remained located on the SES Astra platform.

Sky Sports soon developed into one of the most successful channels in the Sky system. It was from September 1992, that Sky began selling Sky Sports like a subscription channel. After Sky Movies, this was the second channel in the Sky system that was encrypted via the Video Crypt system. Even though Sky Sports began by airing sports including golf and rugby, it soon acquired the rights to air Italian and German League Football thereby increasing its popularity base.

In 1992/93, with the formation of the Premier League, Sky Sports had become the most popular sports channel following a purchase of the exclusive broadcasting rights of Premier League Football in England and Ireland for a period of 5 years.

Sky Sports also manages Sky Sports news, the 24 hour sports news channel which had been launched in 1998. The design of this news channel was revamped during 2007. This was just in time with the football season. Although the main structure of presentation was preserved, the color displays of the information box, the ticker at the bottom of the screen and also the breaking news ticker were changed. A new studio, new theme tune and new title sequences were also a portion of the revamping. However the broadcasting format continued to be at the 4:3 and did not get upgraded to the Widescreen 16:9 formats clicking here.

Till date Sky Sports is related more with football compared to any other sports. It is perhaps due to this reason why this channel does have a tendency to experience some loss in viewership during the summers when no football is played.

Lee Hughes name receives mixed reactions while talking about football. His illustrious career continues to be followed closely by sky sports news who were following his career from his days as a semi professional in […]